· Private foundation
Nelson & Vera Hicks Charitable Fdn
Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 69% of NELSON & VERA HICKS CHARITABLE FDN’s grantee dollars fall outside its nine largest cause areas, whether because the recipient carries no IRS cause code or because its cause sits in the long tail. A chart would be mostly one residual band and misrepresent the portfolio.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k31 grants · $110k
- $10k–50k11 grants · $150k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| YMCA OF DODGE COUNTY | $26,000 |
| ST AMBROSE ACADEMY | $20,000 |
| CHURCH HEALTH SERVICES | $15,000 |
| BEAVER DAM SCHOLARSHIP FOUNDATION | $12,500 |
| MADISON AREA TECHNICAL COLLEGE | $12,000 |
| GREEN VALLEY ENTERPRISES & ALZHEIMER UNIT | $12,000 |
| MORAINE PARK TECHNICAL COLLEGE | $12,000 |
| WORLD ORPHAN FUND | $10,000 |
| CHARISH CLASSICAL ACADEMY | $10,000 |
| ST VINCENT DEPAUL BEAVER DAM | $10,000 |
| RAWHIDE BOYS RANCH | $10,000 |
| THERESA PUBLIC LIBRARY | $5,000 |
| LOMIRA PUBLIC LIBRARY | $5,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN FOUNDATION CANCER CENTER | $5,000 |
| ST STEPHENS LUTHERN SCHOOL LIBRARY | $5,000 |
Do your dollars go where the need is?
Each grant placed by the hardship in its grantee’s ZIP, then read against the area’s typical level.
Your human-services grants (FY17–25, $158k) land where the poverty rate runs at 8%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 0% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-need ZIPs.
Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty linein the grantee’s ZIP, averaged from the tracts in that ZIP; grantee ZIP can differ from where services are delivered.
US grants placed by each grantee’s ZIP, which can differ from where services are actually delivered. Need from public data — U.S. Census/ACS, CDC PLACES, Eviction Lab, USDA — shown as context about the area, never attributed to your giving.
Who you back again
Which organizations you funded more than once, and which you funded a single time. Each grantee is matched to its own filings.
55 repeat relationships — 42 still active in FY2025, 13 since wound down.
How the two cohorts compare
Organizations
Total granted
Still filing today
New vs renewed · share of each year
In FY2025, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 went to new ones.
Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant
First-time = a grantee’s first year in your filing window; renewed = funded in an earlier year too. As a portfolio matures the renewed share naturally climbs — once funded, an org stays “renewable” — so the signal is the years that buck it (a new-grantee intake wave). The earliest year is left-censored: relationships that predate the data read as “new.” Theme is the grantee’s IRS cause.
Backed again, and grew
- SASAINT AMBROSE ACADEMY INC6× · 2020–2025 · $150k · revenue +40%
- CHCHURCH HEALTH SERVICES INC9× · 2017–2025 · $135k · revenue +99%
- BDBEAVER DAM SCHOLARSHIP FOUNDATION INC9× · 2017–2025 · $101k · revenue +18%
Funded once
- SMST MARKS EPISCOPAL CHURCHone grant, 2022 · $8k
- ROREACH OUT AND READ - CHILDREN'S HEALTH ALLIANCE WIone grant, 2022 · $3k
Repeat = funded in two or more distinct years; growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.
The map has a center of gravity: the average direction from the rest of the sector toward the organizations the foundation funds — the shape of its giving. Scoring every nonprofit along that direction surfaces the ones that look most like the portfolio. These are the closest matchesthat aren’t grantees — a resemblance in what they say they do, not a recommendation.
The mission of help of door county, inc. is to eliminate domestic abuse through prevention and intervention services and to advocate for social change.
Tall oaks academy seeks to partner with christian parents to raise up children in the nurture and admonition of the lord and to set them free from the enslavements of fallen humanity, by god's grace. the three pillars of freedom that we…
Child evangelism fellowship is an evangelical, bible-centered mission whose purpose is to evangelize boys and girls with the gospel of the lord jesus christ and to establish (disciple) them in the word of god and in a local church for…
Valley christian school pursues educational excellence through christ centered programs to produce servant leaders.
A door of hope pregnancy center is a christ-centered organization that empowers people to make life-affirming and healthy decisions, particularly about sex, pregnancy and relationships.
Operation of three charter school districts located at twelve sites in the tulsa and oklahoma city areas
Pathways of wisconsin provides supported employment opportunities and empowerment through quality, person-centered programming for individuals of all abilities.
At Catholic Charities, we focus our efforts around three core pillars: Food Access, Mental Health and Housing. Guided by our mission - to serve and enhance human dignity for all people - we provide essential services and foster a sense of…
Guided by our values, Catholic Charities North Dakota serves people in need and advocates for the common good of all.
Bringing souls face to face with the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus Christ and forming missionaries of the New Evangelization. The organization has realized this mission by providing music and production services for worship events.
Humane society providing animal stray service and animal care including adoptions, redemptions, and surrenders for residents located in dodge county, wi and surrounding areas.
Our lady of hope clinic is a direct primary care clinic that gives at least 55% of its services to the uninsured at no cost, consistent with the catholic health care tradition.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Ymca of Dodge County Inc and the most unlike its peers is Pregnancy Support Center of Dodge County Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 28 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 15% of the field you don’t fund.
Age = years since IRS exemption (a founding proxy). “Closed” = auto-revocation for 3 years of non-filing — a floor on closure, not proof, and bigger established orgs lapse least. Association, not causation.
17 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2025.
Each one resolved to its own IRS returns and tracked year by year — your grant beside their revenue from every source. Association, dated; never a causal claim.
Counted here: distinct organizations you funded across 2017–2025, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 17 of the 57 grantees resolved in that span have returns of their own we could reconcile; the rest are funded organizations whose filings we could not track year by year.
Where your money sits — by cause, then by grantee
Each org by its size and your share of it — top-left is where you’re load-bearing
Go grantee by grantee — a decade per org, and how each moved after you funded them
A decade per grantee — revenue shaded, your grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.
- Who funds SAINT AMBROSE ACADEMY INC ↗
- Who funds CHURCH HEALTH SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds BEAVER DAM SCHOLARSHIP FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds RAWHIDE INC ↗
- Who funds PEOPLE AGAINST A VIOLENT ENVIRONMENT IN ↗
- Who funds The World Orphan Fund Inc ↗
- Who funds CENTRAL WISCONSIN CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS INC ↗
- Who funds CHARIS CLASSICAL ACADEMY INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds YMCA OF DODGE COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds The Gathering Source Inc ↗
- Who funds PREGNANCY SUPPORT CENTER OF DODGE COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds OPPORTUNITY INTERNATIONAL INC D/B/A OPPORTUNITY INTERNATIONAL-US ↗
The grantmakers whose grantees overlap with yours far more than size alone predicts. Each orbits closer the stronger the alignment; the arcs between them show where they also fund each other. Here it reads as a tightly interlocked camp — most of these funders back each other's grantees too.
Open a dossier: The Peter J Seippel Foundation Inc · Duane and Kathleen Foulkes Foundation Inc · United Way of Dodge County Inc · Keller Family Charitable Trust · Beaver Dam Community Hospitals Foundation Inc · The Jack and Arlene Schumann Foundation Inc · Green Bay Packers Foundation · Greater Milwaukee Foundation Inc · Alliant Energy Foundation Inc · American Endowment Foundation · Natl Christian Charitable Fdn Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program
Affinity is a Gamma-Poisson posterior co-funding rate, re-centered on the typical rate, so thin evidence shrinks toward no signal. A research starting point: overlap is association, not proof of shared intent.
Government reliance of your grantees
Every dot is one organization Nelson & Vera Hicks Charitable Fdn funds. Left–right is the share of its income from government; up–down is the share from you. Bigger dots raise more. Filter to federal or a single department — and drag the year to watch it move.
Government income is each org’s traced federal awards (USASpending — grants and contracts) plus state payments (open checkbooks) as a share of its total revenue (IRS Form 990); the self-reported government-grant line (990 line 1e) is carried for cross-check: a grantee that reports government grants we could not trace to a source is left off the chart rather than shown as receiving none. An association, not a claim that your grant caused the public funding. Coverage is precision-first — a floor, not a census; state records exist for 9 states, so a grantee outside them shows no state figure (dimmed) rather than a false zero. Federal award amounts are obligations, which can span years, so a single-year share is indicative. 990 filings lag 12–24 months.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Nelson & Vera Hicks Charitable Fdn?
Find your warmest path to Nelson & Vera Hicks Charitable Fdn through trustees and officers whose names appear on both boards. Search for your organization and Plinth traces the shortest route it can evidence.
Each link is a name appearing on two organizations’ public IRS 990 filings, matched on that name and, where the filings support it, on location. A same-state match has geographic support, which is a second matching feature rather than confirmation that the two are one person; a cross-state one is the likeliest to be two people who share a name. Every hop shows its tier, low-confidence and distant paths are held back rather than guessed, and it is worth confirming the person before you use the introduction.